Online journalism news

Tag Archives: CBS

A group of online content syndicators including the Associated Press, Reuters, Tribune Company and CBS has released a proposed set of guidelines for content syndication, according to a report from MediaWeek.

The guidelines are aimed at countering the effect that the group sees as a growing and dangerous trend on the web – the rise of shoddy, poorly-sourced and edited content, often produced solely with gaming search engines in mind.

The proposed guidelines will now be open to review by its membership and the wider online media industry.

CBS will have access to work from GlobalPost’s network of 70 correspondents in around 50 countries – though these journalists will not feature in the CBS broadcasts.

“GlobalPost has produced an increasing amount of work in video, but the site’s video approach generally features a lone reporter shooting, narrating and doing some of the editing on a piece.

“As envisioned, GlobalPost correspondents will continue to develop reports in the regions where they work, and CBS News will either share that work with its viewers through its anchors or perhaps dispatch its own correspondents and camera people to shoot video and put a CBS face on the reports,” explains the Times.

The membership option to site users has been harder to sell, founder Philip Balboni told the Times.

David Westphal at the Online Journalism Review reflects on the Post’s membership offering, its Passport service, as he considers whether hiring out journalists as researchers could provide a new business model – something the Post is already testing:

“[A] separate unit that would do contract or customized research for paying clients. Revenue generated would supply one piece of the business-model formula that would pay for the core investigative reporting business.”

America has lost a top celebrity anchorman, whose news delivery was so influential, he came to be called ‘the most trusted man in America’.

He died peacefully at his home, on Friday July 17, at the age of 92.

Walter Cronkite was an anchorman for CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981, reading news including a wide range of historical events: the moon landings, Watergate, John F. Kennedy’s assassination and the Vietnam war.

He had a reassuring manner of delivering the news that inspired confidence and trust in the audience. Every evening 70 million Americans heard him deliver his broadcast, which invariably concluded with the parting words “And that’s the way it is.”

He was born Walter Leland Cronkite Jr on November 4th, 1916 in St. Joseph, Missouri, the son of a dentist. As a teenager, his family moved to Houston, where he had his first junior reporter job at The Houston Post – and at the same time delivering the very paper for which he worked.

Known for his trademark clipped moustache and grave voice, he was affectionately known as Uncle Walt, owing to a resemblance to Walt Disney. Despite his popularity, Cronkite was uncomfortable with his celebrity status and declined a proposal for a Walter Cronkite fan club saying: “I don’t think news people ought to have fan clubs.” He also brushed aside suggestions for him to stand for vice-president, even president. The only job he had ever wanted was that of reporter.

No amount of friendship or adulation could compromise Cronkite’s journalistic integrity. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said, “When I wanted to make a point Cronkite was the first person I would call. I was sure I was getting a fair interview – tough but fair.”

Some of Cronkite’s finest moments:

1963: Assassination of President John F . Kennedy: Walter Cronkite famously displays a rare show of emotion, taking off his glasses to fight back tears as he announces the death of President Kennedy. Video below:

1968: Vietnam War: After visiting Vietnam in 1968, he called the war ‘a stalemate’ and made his pro-peace stance clear. His views were so influential that, having watched the broadcast, the then US President Lyndon Johnson reportedly said, “I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” Two weeks later Johnson resigned and announced he would not stand for re-election. Walter Cronkite on the Vietnam War.

1977: Cronkite’s interview with Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin led to Sadat visiting Jerusalem and signing the peace accords the following year at Camp David.

Cronkite retired from from the CBS evening news programme in 1981, handing it over to Dan Rather, but continued producing special reports for the CBS network and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honour. In 1983 he covered the general elections in the UK for ITV and interviewed Margaret Thatcher.

According to the report, Ustream, which provided livestreaming of the event in partnership with CBS, said it was the largest ever event hosted on the service with 4.6 million streams and 12,000 messages posted every minute to the chatrooms surrounding the streams.

Figures from web usage monitoring company Gomez International suggest news sites were less available, because of the slowdown caused by video streaming, with some taking nearly triple the time to load pages.

“Seeking a younger audience more accustomed to watching the news on the internet than on television, CBS News said Monday that it had joined with a live video web site [Ustream] to simulcast its newscasts and special reports,” reports the New York Times.

Ustream, will host ‘CBS Evening News With Katie Couric,’ breaking news coverage and ‘unfiltered news conferences and speeches’, it is reported. Full story at this link…

Stinky Journalism has unraveled a tangled web involving CNN, its parent company Time Warner, an anchor for a rival broadcaster and infomercials run without proper identification, as required by the Federal Trade Commission in the US.

CBS Interactive plans to relaunch TV.com, paidContent reports. The network ‘hopes to transform the well-named site known for its TV-related community and user-generated content into a serious video destination,’ according to PaidContent’s reporter.